Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

PART 2: TEDROS

Tedros Arthur Pendragon (born 26th December, 1988) is a Welsh singer, songwriter and producer. Pendragon debuted as a soloist under Caliburn Records in 2005 at the age of 17, and after a string of moderate successes, scored three #1 hits in quick succession from 2007-8, catapulting him to international stardom and fame. 

(a month later, NYC)

Tedros had said he wasn’t going to drink much at this party, and he’d been doing pretty well... until Kei had arrived. 

Then it was less successful. 

He hadn’t meant to follow Kei out to the hotel’s manicured garden, but it had just sort of happened. He’d been sulking and watching couples on the dance floor, and Kei had come into his line of vision, and Tedros had thought fuck’s sake, why is he here and then answer my calls, asshole. He had ordered several more cocktails while dithering about whether to confront him or not, had a shot for confidence (which, in retrospect, was wildly unnecessary) and had followed him into this horrible garden with square bushes. Maybe? That was maybe what had happened--

Oh, the calls. 

“I called you.” said Tedros, trying to lean on a nearby bush. It was a rose bush, and it stabbed him, as well as proving poor leaning-on material. It buckled, and Tedros stumbled.

“Yes.” said Kei thinly. “Many times.”

Tedros regained his footing, glad he hadn’t been holding a glass he could have spilled everywhere. He’d left his glass… somewhere. He wasn’t sure where. 

“Not tha’ many. Like… five... what’s he doin’ here?”

For a horribly familiar face had loomed up behind Kei’s shoulder. Rhian. Fucking Rhian, who always turned up right when things were shit, then proceeded to make them worse. He was like a sniffer dog for drama and sadness and general misery. The world champion at rubbing salt into the wound. Sometimes Tedros wondered if he’d accidentally blown up an entire country in a past life, and Rhian was his punishment. He couldn’t think why else he’d be stuck sharing a dad with him.

“Let’s not do this here, Tedros.” said Rhian in his snooty grammar school accent. Arthur had expended a lot of money on packing him off to Eton to keep him out of the way, on Evelyn Sader’s insistence. Didn’t work, though. Rhian returned consistently, like mould on a wall. 

Rhian continued; “Not now--” 

“Are you ever in your consistency?” sneered Tedros. The grass was awfully difficult to keep his footing on, especially in the boots he was wearing, which were not exactly practical. “Whatcha doing here? No wonder they wanna vote you out at the by-election, you’re rubbishhh, using all your expenses up on shit partiesss--”

“Constituency, Tedros, not consistency.” sighed Rhian. 

“You missed your calling as a really fatheaded English teacher.” Tedros told him spitefully. “Maybe you can train as one once you lose your seat, hah...”

“Tedros.” said Rhian sternly. “You’re really drunk. I know you’re upset, but--”

Tedros squinted resentfully at him, not really listening. He hated how Rhian talked to him. There was always a coiling undercurrent of patron… patronism? Patronisingness? Fuck, he didn’t know what the word was. He talked to him like he was a kid and it pissed him right off. 

“Sod off, Rhian.” he spat, trying to stand properly upright and doing a poor job. “You didn’t answer my calls either, you git. Sneaking around with my boyfriend behind my back. Bastard! Agatha was right about both of you...”

Agatha was always right, Tedros reflected vaguely. Not that thinking about Agatha was going to make him feel better. It was half the reason he’d been sulking in the first place. He also noticed, equally vaguely, that there were people behind him, staring. That was bad. His publicist was gonna kill him. Mind you, being dead sounded ok in comparison to your old boyfriend showing up with the person he cheated on you with, that was pretty shit, also Tedros kinda felt sick…

He caught sight of Nicola on the fringe of the group, and tried to catch her eye, but she was texting furiously, not watching. Maybe she was telling her mates about it. Bit of a spectacle, they were causing. 

“Tedros, I already told you that we’re not doing this here.” snapped Rhian, patience fraying. “You’re pissed beyond belief and I’m not talking to you until you’re sober. We’re going to go--”

“You’re not talking to me full stop! Neither of you are! You’re ignoring me! ” Tedros hissed--  then changed track, appealing abruptly to Kei. “Kei, tell me what I did wrong, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong--”

“Leave him alone.” said Rhian stiffly. 

“What are you, his mother?” snapped Tedros.

“I told you why we were over, Tedros, don’t be a pain.” said Kei flatly.

“You didn’t mean it, though, right? You were so mean--”

“I was honest, Tedros. You’re clingy and overbearing, and you embarrass yourself too frequently for my liking. Like you’re doing now.” Kei shot a glance around at the gawking party guests. “I knew coming here was a mistake. Me and Rhian are going to leave now. Do not text me-- Tedros, are you listening, because you definitely weren’t last time--”

Tedros wasn’t listening this time, either, because he was going to be sick. 

Rhian stepped forward, scowling, and reached for him--

Tedros doubled over and threw up on Rhian’s shiny Louboutins. 

The watching crowd groaned in mingling sympathy and amusement. Gasping, Tedros looked desperately up at Rhian, who glared down at him, disdain and pity merging into a horrible, sickly expression. 

Rhian opened his mouth, Tedros’s vision tipped dizzily--

“Oh.” said Rhian, gazing somewhere behind Tedros. “Well, well. Good timing.”

“Go chase yourself, Sader.”

Tedros went rigid. 

A hand closed hard around his upper arm and yanked him backwards. And as sloppy drunk, miserable, and humiliated as he was, Tedros recognised the bony fingers, the brisk gait, and the grim, displeased energy practically seething from every pore, without even needing to get a single look at Agatha’s face.

He burst into tears as she shoved her arm under his armpits, hauled him upright, and more or less dragged him away-- through the noisy function room where no-one was paying attention, through the quiet entrance area, and opening a side door into a mercifully cool, dim corridor. 

He swayed, trying to get control of his wildly pitching vision. Agatha’s hand tightened on his side, trying to keep him upright. She was just as tall as him, and weirdly strong for someone so skinny; Tedros kept listing and knocking into her, but she may as well have been a concrete wall, for all she was budging. 

“Where are we goi--”

“Shut up, you’re talking way too loudly.”

There was a soft ding and the rumbling of doors opening, and Agatha shoved Tedros into the lift, propping him up against the wall. 

“Didn’t know you were here.” croaked Tedros, resting his pounding head against the cool mirrors on the inside. 

“I wasn’t at the party.” said Agatha calmly. “I’m staying here whilst I’m in New York. Nicola texted me so I came down to retrieve you.”

“You could’a stayed with me, I have space, loadsa it...”

But it was weird now, wasn’t it? Now that he’d made it weird. It was so… bad. It all felt bad. There was a tall bad-tempered space in his life, and he’d put it there. Fucking terrible. It felt so bad. He was gonna be sick again, maybe. Or maybe it was his chest, not his stomach. He didn’t know.

Agatha didn’t reply. Or if she had, he hadn’t heard her--

He slipped, and Agatha hauled him back upright again. 

“How much did you drink?”

Tedros was still struggling to remember when the lift stopped, and the doors slid open. Agatha hauled him out into another dim corridor, and they made their awkward, laborious way down. She opened a door at the end, and Tedros stumbled into a--

“The fuck?” he mumbled.

“It’s a rooftop garden. Try to keep up.”

“Oh. Thought we were back downstairs.”

“Yeah, I know you did. Sit on the floor and don’t fall to your death off the balcony.” Agatha slammed the door behind them.

“Ok--” Tedros made a noble effort at trying to sit down, and fell headfirst into a fuschia bush.

Agatha caught him and dragged him out, muttering furiously under her breath. Whatever she was saying, she clearly didn’t want him to understand it, because it was in Thai too fast for his basic understanding, especially as drunk as he was. 

“Sorry.” he mumbled.

“Sit here.”

Agatha hauled him several steps, and then he was deposited on his backside in prickly artificial grass.

“Have you ever considered getting drunk less?” said Agatha, looming over him. 

“You smell nice.” said Tedros absently. 

“It’s the honeysuckle bush.”

Tedros frowned. “I like honeysuckle.”

“I know you do.”

“But I don’t think--” 

Agatha leaned past him and pinched a blossom from the stem, crushing it between her fingers. Tedros’s skin prickled as she came close to him, when her arm brushed his neck--

“See.” she held her hand out to him.

Tedros looked vaguely at the squished flower.

“...that’s not very nice to the honeysuckle.” 

“As we established, I am not known for being nice.” said Agatha crisply, tossing the flower to the floor and wiping her hand on her jeans. Tedros squeezed his eyes shut, the low thrum of that unpleasant feeling returning. It wasn’t nausea. It was guilt. He’d known that all along, really. But guilt for… for what? For everything? For being a mess and embarrassing and for… for everything, yes. 

“Don’t be mad at me.” sniffed Tedros. 

No response. 

“Agatha?”

Tedros opened his eyes. The contrast between them was ridiculous. Agatha in her jeans and boring t-shirt, Tedros in his ridiculous heeled boots and sparkly jacket and mesh shirt, like a bisexual Earring Magic Ken. 

“Achara--”

“I’m not mad.” said Agatha stiffly.

“You sound mad.”

“I’m not, Tedros.” Agatha snapped.

She was. 

Tedros peered miserably up at her, struggling to focus. 

“We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

Agatha gazed at him. 

“Yes.” 

“Best friends?” Tedros begged.

“If you like.” said Agatha softly.

That wasn’t really what Tedros had wanted, but he was too tired and drunk and miserable to try and articulate what he had wanted.

“Are you sure you’re not ma--”

“Stop asking, Tedros.”

Tedros swallowed. 

“Yeah.”

Silence, for a moment. Then;

“You really can’t cope with disapproval.” Agatha told him, finally. “You know I’ll get over it.”

Maybe. But it would simmer, wouldn’t it? Things lurked, with Agatha. He was a drunk, stupid frog, and it was too late for him to jump out of the pot of her bad favour, now. It had boiled over. He was now a very dead frog, as well as a drunk and stupid one. 

Yeah, that was… a bad metaphor. Was it a metaphor? Or a simile? Maybe it was an allegory. What sort of a songwriter was he? A bad one, people said. Right now he was a very, very drunk one.

Tedros hiccupped.

“Not… disapproval. Really. In general. ‘s just you.”

“What?” scoffed Agatha. “It’s not--”

“I never read any of your reviews of my stuff, you know?” Tedros said plainly, picking at the sequins on his jacket. “I can’t do it. I can’t. I don’t want you to disapprove of me. I want to impress you so, so bad, so I get someone else to write down everything you say I should do, and then I do it next time, so that you’ll be happy with me, but then there’s more stuff next time... But never once have I read a review, ‘cause I can’t bear the idea that you might not like my work, ‘cause it’s so… it’s so me, so if you didn’t like my work, you couldn’t possibly like me--”

“Tedros--” Agatha interjected, shocked, but Tedros lumbered on;

“--I know it’s so stupid and it’s just your job but…” he swallowed. “I always secretly liked you best, you know? No matter how many people I dated. I’ll always love you best. You keep my head on straight, and say my name nice, and I love your wonky haircuts and your ugly cat and that you don’t take shit and…” he started crying again. “I’m so sorry I called you and hung up on you-- I didn’t mean to fuck it up, please don’t stop being my friend, I couldn’t bear it… I couldn’t…”

He stared up at her, blurry through tears and alcohol. He couldn’t make out her expression, if she even had one. She often adopted a completely neutral expression when she was trying to conceal anger.

There was a long, long pause. The bass thumped from the floors below, and over the balcony, down on the street, Tedros could hear shouting and shutters snapping. Agatha had been right about the paparazzi. Because she was always right.  

He wanted to tell her… a thousand things, and nothing. He could repeat it a million times-- I love you and I’m sorry-- but what good would it do? She’d turned him down, and instead of taking it on the chin, he’d accidentally called her and exposed how pathetically he was dealing with being rejected. Now he was embarrassing himself in front of her….

No, he was embarrassing himself in front of her again. 

God, no wonder she’d turned him down.

I’m not what you want.

Well. She wasn’t always right, because she was what he wanted. She was, she was, she always was but...

I’m not risking ruining our friendship to be your rebound girlfriend. 

Tedros buried his face in his hands, burning with shame and misery. 

Maybe Agatha took pity on him, at least a little, because when Tedros lifted his head to wipe his eyes, she was sitting down next to him. 

“Just my criticism, huh?”

“Yeah.” Tedros croaked.

“I see.”

Tedros didn’t know how to reply to that, so he didn’t. They were silent, for a long time. Tedros stared across at the fancy luxury apartments opposite. There was a couple on their balcony, off to the side. They were giggling over something on their laptop. The woman had her back to them, but she had the most gorgeous fall of dark hair--

“You spoken to Valentina lately?” said Agatha. There was an odd tone to her voice. Tedros turned to her, not really thinking about what she’d asked. He watched her push her hair behind her ear. 

“Who the fuck is Valentina?” he said vaguely. Agatha’s hands were so nice. Pianists hands. 

Said hands stilled for a moment. 

“...never mind.” Agatha said softly.

“Oh.” Tedros blinked. “Ok.” 

He sat back, toppled over, and ended up in a tired, dizzy heap under the honeysuckle. 

Agatha clicked her tongue in irritation, but she didn’t seem as angry as she had when she’d come to retrieve him. She seemed tired.

She didn’t retrieve him, though.

“How’s it, down there?”

“Smells nice.” said Tedros weakly. 

“I bet.” Agatha tucked her knees under her chin.

“Not as nice as you.”

“Tedros, I have one perfume, and it’s that ginger-y one Sophie hates. This is nothing new.”

“I like it.”

“Mm.”

Tedros worried his lower lip. They had done this back and forth many times before, about everything from perfumes to haircuts to jewellery. He didn’t like how it felt... tainted, now.

“Surely there’s bugs down there.” said Agatha, eyeing his head in the dirt.

“Think so.” said Tedros honestly. “But it’s very freeing. There’s… woodlouses, ‘nd everything.”

Agatha side-eyed him.

“The plural is woodlice.”

“Yeah… woodlices…” Tedros peered through the leaves, at the sliver of the moon. He was so weary. “Might sleep here.”

“Your manager will have a fit.” said Agatha. 

A pause. 

Sighing, she shuffled over and came to lie under the honeysuckle bush, next to him, but just far away enough that their shoulders barely brushed. They stared at the leaves, and the moon that it didn’t quite conceal.

“Sorry.” said Tedros. “ ‘m so sorry.”

In an ideal world, she would have absolved him. Instead, she said; 

“I know.”

Tedros shut his eyes and succumbed to his misery.

So, later, he was distinctly confused when he woke up in a panic to the screech of an alarm, in an unfamiliar bed, and an even more unfamiliar room. Heart pounding, he bolted up--

Someone scrabbled from the other side of the room and snatched up the source of the beeping.

“Sorry, forgot to turn it off--”

Tedros stilled as the alarm stopped and he recognised Agatha’s voice, but he was still reeling. Why the hell was he in a hotel room with Agatha? With no shirt on, at that? He should be so goddamn lucky--

The recollection and the nausea hit him in the same unpleasant, smacking wave. 

“Oh, god--” he doubled over, but Agatha was faster. She’d grabbed him, hauled him out of bed, and had deposited him in the shower before he’d even started throwing up, and stood over him like a very unsympathetic nurse while he retched.

“How did I--” his question was cut off with another round of coughing, but Agatha seemed to catch his meaning. 

“I had to carry you back. World could’ve ended and you wouldn’t have woken up. I hope your head isn’t actually insured, because I accidentally smacked it into a doorframe. Sorry.”

The crisp tone didn’t make her sound very sorry, but Tedros knew if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have said anything at all. Though he did probe the knot forming on his skull, he wasn’t very concerned. What was worrying him more was that any benevolence she seemed to have felt last night had vanished, crushed like the honeysuckle blossom under her irritation.

Perhaps he ought to apologise again.

But then again, maybe she’d just turn the shower on and drown him. That’s what he’d be tempted to do, if he was dealing with his hungover lovesick best friend who he’d tried to rationally turn down.

“Chaddick is gonna pick you up from the underground car park at 8:30, and you can’t dawdle, because it’s best if you’re not spotted.” said Agatha, as Tedros tried to work out if he was going to be sick again or not. “I called your manager and told her the situation.”

“Was she annoyed?” managed Tedros. 

“Didn’t seem it.”

That was a yes, then, and Dovey was saving the proper telling-off for when Tedros was both sober and in her presence.

 “...ok.” Tedros shuddered, hating the clamminess of his skin and the way his hair stuck to the back of his neck. “Um, what happened to my shirt?”

“I washed it in the sink, it was disgusting.” said Agatha crisply. “Same for your jacket. So they’re both soaked. Your jeans mostly survived, which is good because I was not going to try and peel you out of them, and we’re the same size in shirts, so you can cobble something together.”

They weren’t actually the same size in shirts, but Agatha wore things too big and Tedros wore shirts that were far too tight, so it evened out.

“...ok…” said Tedros, confusion starting to give rapid ground to hot embarrassment. “Um. So... what time is it?”

Agatha briefly consulted her cracked phone, flashing up a horrible picture of Reaper as her screensaver. 

“6:45.”

“Right. I’m, um. I’m gonna have a shower.”

“You do that.” Agatha stepped over him and made for the door. “Don’t smash your head on the floor. Or drown.”

She shot him a look over her shoulder, then stepped out and snapped the door shut. 

Tedros sagged against the wall, wondering if drowning would actually be preferable to being in her continued ill favour.

But she’d just be even more annoyed that she had to deal with his dead body.

Later, even with a headache the intensity of a thousand suns, Tedros was sure he could hear Chaddick laughing as the car pulled up. At least someone found it funny, he supposed.

He turned to Agatha, who was leaning against the cold whitewashed wall behind him. 

“Than--”

“Don’t thank me again, I heard you the first twenty times you said it.”

“Oh. Ok.”

Agatha pushed herself off the wall and came to stand next to him as the car slowed to a stop. Tedros nervously side-eyed her, knowing this was about to be horribly awkward, but with no idea how to make it better. He fiddled with the string of the hoodie that she’d given him. It was merch from his last tour. If she hadn’t looked so stern, he might have thought she was laughing at him. Or else, he would have teased her about it. 

Because she clearly wore it often, if she’d brought it with her. 

It smelled of her. 

Tedros took a deep breath.

“Listen--”

Agatha stared at the shiny black exterior of the car, deliberately not looking at him, even as she cut him off:

“Tedros, what can you possibly tell me now that you didn’t drunkenly babble in my face last night?”

Tedros cringed and looked away. Her wording was always too on point. Anyone else would have tried to play it down, but instead Agatha laid it out with the sharp accuracy typical of critics. She spoke in the same manner she wrote, and it was not a manner that was inclined to pull punches. Usually, he appreciated that. 

Usually. 

Agatha sighed, and turned to him. There was a tense, slightly hard quality to her expression, and Tedros stared warily at her, mildly wary she was contemplating hitting him--

So he was immensely surprised when she kissed his cheek instead.

His internal Tedros.exe has crashed must have shown on his face, because she huffed, and clapped him (too hard) on the back in a genial matter that was wildly contrasting with absolutely everything else about her body language, and pointed him into the car.

“Go and sleep off your hangover, git.”

“Yeah.” croaked Tedros. “Thanks.”

He winced, remembering she’d told him not to thank her again, but she mercifully didn’t comment as he ducked into the car. She slammed the door behind him and stood back, shoving her hands in her pockets, and watched Chaddick start to pull away. 

He put his hand to his face, and thought he probably would have felt better if she had hit him, after all.  

This time, he called the correct person. 

“Bea?”

“If you locked yourself out of your house again, I swear to god--”

Tedros got stuck between laughing, and what he’d wanted to say, which was ‘ I fucked up’--

And ended up bursting into tears instead.

Tedros knew full well that when people asked Agatha if he’d ever written about her, she laughed at them and said no. 

This was, technically, true; there were no songs on any of his albums that were about her.

However, that did not mean there were no songs at all. There were plenty. There were loads, in fact. A ridiculous number. But they were scrawled at the back of notebooks wedged at the bottom of shelves, out of context notes on his phone, random voice memos with no titles, hastily scribbled on a scrap piece of paper and shoved into a jacket, only to be discovered a couple of months later, or by the dry-cleaner. None of them had ever made it to actual recorded and produced song stage. Because the idea of putting one, or several, on an album, and then having Agatha review it, made him want to curl up in a hole and die. It was what he’d admitted to her last night, but a billion times worse. He wasn’t clever enough to be able to make it sufficiently subtle, and she wasn’t stupid enough to not be able to guess. 

But now… would she even listen to what he’d put out next? Would she anticipate the stupid, embarassing choice he was about to make, and spare herself the awkwardness? He thought so. He hoped so, anyway.

Of course, he didn’t have to do this. And it would be better if he didn’t. It would be easier, for everyone, for Tedros to write about Kei. Kei, being a dickhead at the dinner party. But his relationship with Kei had been… decidedly boring, besides the crash-and-burn ending. They’d simply sniped at each other a lot and snogged more. They were two bored, pretty people, and in retrospect, Tedros was convinced Kei had just used him to get closer to Rhian. 

Dickheads. Both of them. Maybe they could have a song or two. But, irritating and upsetting as they were, they weren’t worth it. 

So he dug out the notebooks wedged at the bottom of shelves, and the out of context phone notes and voice memos, and the scrap pieces of paper, and fully prepared himself for two things. 

One, for this album to yield the sort of subtly depressing bangers that go number one instantly. 

And two, for Agatha to absolutely skewer it. 

It didn’t stop him being desperate to make sure that Bad Favour and its lead single, Boiling Point!, were nothing less than pop perfection, though. He wrote, rewrote, and rewrote again. He enlisted Nicola, who read through his drafts, raised an eyebrow, and didn't comment, mercifully. She was clever, and Tedros wouldn’t be surprised if Agatha had told her enough for her to make the connection. But she didn’t say anything, and as it turned out, they were a pretty good team.

Just another one of those things Agatha was right about, he supposed. 

Tedros spent weeks in the studio with producers that he liked, but who weren’t the one he really wanted to work with. (He had never actually worked with Agatha; not since they were teenagers on GarageBand on the school macs, anyway. They concluded that they would argue too much and never get anything done, since Agatha spent a painstaking amount of time working on the backing track first, and Tedros liked to write, then sort of vaguely construct the entire thing at once on the piano, which wound her up.) He spent even longer filming a music video, doing promotional shoots, arguing with his team about merch and promo and fonts, and being booked onto shows he didn’t care about. (Except Graham Norton. That one was fun.)

But one thing he was right about was Boiling Point! being a smash. It was. It hurled itself up the charts and wedged itself firmly at number one, dethroning a particularly grating song that Agatha had said sounded like a pissed off goose in a meat grinder. It smashed several records in the process. He afforded himself some smugness over it, but he was still a bag of nerves about… well, everything. But mostly the complete silence from one particular critic’s end.

So when he got the notification with Agatha’s name and the words boiling point in it, he could hardly bear to open the tweet;

@acharakaenthai: stop asking me if I listened to boiling point, of course I did. like the plague, and coworkers you don’t like, it is impossible to avoid. I don’t review singles, but if the whole album is like this, he’s onto something big.

Pathetically, that was all it took to boost Tedros’s mood for a good week. It hadn’t even been glowing (she had compared it to the plague, after all) but he’d take it! He would! 

That was, until he started worrying about whether the rest of the album was like it. It was the same genre, it wasn’t as if it was inconsistent, but was it as good? Did they form a cohesive narrative? Did they--

Tedros had been hoping the entire experience would be cathartic, and it… it was, he supposed, in a weird way, but it was also very, very stressful. The more he thought about it, the more he panicked, and nitpicked. He spilled all of this to Nicola one day (though, leaving out who’s reception it was that he particularly feared), and she’d eyed him, unimpressed.

“Listen, if Boiling Point had flopped, and the rest of the album was shit, I would say you had some justification for being paranoid. However, it did not flop, and the rest of the album is not shit. It is very good. Because we made it, and we are good at our jobs. Well, I know I’m good at mine, I don’t know about the rest of you--”

“I’m good!” said Tedros indignantly. 

“What are you worrying about, then?” scoffed Nicola. 

“I dunno, I just… I dunno. The reception.”

“It’ll do fine at worst, and very well at best,” said Nicola plainly. “Agatha will just poke a few holes in it and Pitchfork will be mean, as per usual. Everyone else will be fine.”

“You think so?”

“Yes.” Nicola unlocked her phone, seemingly considering the conversation to be over. “Want to play Smash or Pass with members of Hort’s security team?”

“Oh my god, always.”

It helped that Tedros did genuinely like Boiling Point! Initially, it had made him wince, and it felt too obvious, too stark and straightforward. But by the end of his first promotions, it had shed its connotations somewhat, or else they’d been absorbed in the chaos of trying to keep its choreo straight in his head. So when he sauntered onstage at some radio station or other’s Jingle Bell Ball, he was feeling much more chill about… well, everything--

But it didn’t mean he was ready to make eye contact with Agatha in the middle of performing it.

He didn’t react noticeably-- he was a professional, keeping his cool on stage was second nature to him-- but his heart stumbled and he was sure his expression must have struggled, for a moment. She was at the back of the standing section, tall enough to see over everyone, wearing an orange lanyard that said Press on it, and surrounded by fellow critics. Tedros snatched his gaze away, but he knew he hadn’t been fast enough, because he’d seen her eyes narrow. 

She’s not here for me, he chanted internally, she’s not here for me, not here for me...

There were at least a dozen other major acts on tonight, so no doubt whichever publication she was currently writing for (was it Rolling Stone? Pitchfork? The Guardian? God, he couldn’t remember) had asked her to come to review the show. It wasn’t unusual. It was just that he’d had the misfortune to not notice her until he was halfway through the song about her--

Of course, it was much easier to perform a song if the subject was right there. But he wasn’t sure that was exactly a plus. He was meant to be having fun and being an engaging performer, not dumping his emotional baggage on the poor sods who’d spent a lot of money and time to come and see him perform.

Hoping the way his heart was pounding wasn’t obvious, Tedros dragged his attention back to the people screaming in his face on the front row and plastered a hasty smile back on his face, hoping the tension in his body and the sudden prick of sweat on his neck would be put down to choreo, that it wouldn’t look abnormal...

It wasn’t easy, though. He put the capo on the wrong fret when he did the acoustic set, and nearly started the whole thing in the wrong key. Twice, the sound tech came in his ear monitors and asked you good, mate, you look a bit pale? and he tried to nod both subtly and convincingly, which was very hard. His backups shot him concerned looks, he nearly tripped on cables twice, and a couple of girls in the front row with a sign that said something very rude about Kei were gawking anxiously at him. Put it down to his fans to notice something he was desperately trying to cover up. 

But he was doing averagely well, until he craned his neck trying to get one last look as he left the stage-- was she looking at him?-- and walked smack into his manager.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dovey, immediately. Tedros pinked, startled. 

“Uh, not feeling super well. Bit sick. I’ll be fine. I’ll just go and...”

He pointed vaguely down the hallway and set off at a fast clip towards his dressing room, but Dovey followed him, undeceived. 

“Have you been drinking again?” 

“No!” insisted Tedros, as people came scampering over to relieve him of his head mic and ear monitors. “I haven’t had anything-- oh, thank you, thanks-- I just don’t feel… great...”

Dovey looked thoughtfully at him.

“Was the press box in your eyeline?” she asked mildly. Tedros cursed internally, knowing she was tracking his train of thought way too easily.

“What press box?” he said pitchily, yanking open the dressing room door and practically hurling himself through. “Was there press? I didn’t see--”

Dovey snatched a towel and a water bottle from somewhere, followed him inside, and barged the door shut with her hip.

“Oh, get a grip, dear. I know you saw Agatha and panicked.”

Tedros gawked at her, frozen. 

“But--”

Dovey tossed the towel to him and Tedros slung it vaguely around his neck, desperately trying to think of a way to talk his way out of it. 

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” said Dovey, surprising him. “There’ll be some talk on Tweeter--”

“Twitter, Clarissa--”

“Yes, yes, that--” Dovey waved an airy hand, ignoring the pained look on Tedros’s face. Dovey had been in showbusiness for probably thousands of years, and she was immensely competent, but it did mean she had no concept of modern methods of communications. She still asked people to fax things, sometimes. “But I think it will simply be put down to nerves, illness, or personal problems, which it is, and you still delivered a decent performance, so what’s the issue? I thought you might faint, but if it’s just Agatha…?” she shrugged and let the sentence hang, as if to say, isn’t it always?  

Tedros made a vague, all-encompassing gesture.

“But I told you--”

“Yes, you had to tell me, dear. No one else knows about it. It’s only a world-shattering issue because you’re letting it become one.” Dovey threw the water bottle at him, which Tedros just barely caught. “Just Whatsup her, or whatever it is you young people do nowadays.”

“...WhatsApp?”

“Yes, that--” Dovey checked her watch. “You’ve got about an hour and a half to yourself, go and… mingle, or something, then Chaddick’s back for us. Now I really need to go and check on the girls, Milly and Flavia were having an absolute meltdown over something, there’s a good lad--”

She went bustling out, and Tedros exhaled. Dovey was a good manager, but having several acts at once meant she could be inattentive, at times.

He rocked on his heels, considering, and also wishing Dovey had sent someone to help peel him out of these boots and leather trousers. He could text Agatha. Maybe she’d come backstage. She could, if she wanted. But that was the problem. She probably didn’t want to…

Tedros chugged the entire water bottle out of nerves, then spent ten minutes trying to decide if his dog ankles were visible in these boots--

He remembered vividly the last time he had lamented his ankles, swore loudly, and sent a pathetic text.

Agatha

Tedros: Omg I didn’t know you were gonna be here 

Tedros: Saw you at the back lol

She saw it immediately-- no wonder, because the boy band that were on were awful, she was probably typing notes at the speed of light-- but she didn’t reply right away. Tedros sat on the weird vinyl sofa, started getting cold, and went to find someone to help peel him out of his outfit so he could wear Normal People Clothes, checking his phone the whole way. 20 minutes and he was still on seen. 25. 30. The terrible band went off and The Evergirls, the girl group also signed to his label, went on as the closing act, to a much more enthusiastic audience. He found some normal clothes to wear and went to the bathroom, got cornered by the terrible boy band from earlier, and took a few unenthusiastic pictures with them, while lines from Agatha’s skewering of their debut album floated, unbidden, to the forefront of his memory.

(The floppy, inconsistent synthlines, wobbling over the tracks like an air dancer outside a car dealership, the children’s-book level lyricism, the hastily-applied autotune, the poorly mixed vocals. All of these things combine to create the impression that a very unskilled production and writing team have been trapped in a dungeon and forced to try and replicate every number one song this year on one album, but they didn’t care enough to try and make it good.)

He left before he could laugh, and checked his phone again. Nothing. He sat on the vinyl sofa and stared at the wall. Worried his lower lip. 40 minutes. 45. Scrolled Twitter. Liked a couple of tweets, including one from the girls he’d seen earlier, with the “Please Hire Us To Murder Kei We Won’t Get Caught Lol” sign, who’d had the good sense to not hold the sign in any of their pictures. He hoped no one had caught him smirking at it on video. He took a couple of selfies and bad-naturedly deleted them. All the while, he checked his notifications, and constantly re-opened the conversation, worried he’d missed the reply. When he ducked out to get a snack, he saw two orange Press lanyards, and his heart skipped a beat, but they were two men who seemed to be friends with a couple of managers. He slunk, dejected, back into his dressing room. 50 minutes. 55…

And he was still there, on the vinyl sofa, when Dovey came to get him. 

He got a reply, later. Much later. 

Agatha

Agatha: The girl who was supposed to go and review it

was ill, so they sent me instead, at the last minute

Tedros had told himself that she wasn’t there for him, and he’d known it, but the confirmation still stung, as did the complete ghosting of his text.

Tedros: Oh, makes sense.

He typed out a message asking what she’d thought, then decided that was pathetic, and also she probably wouldn’t be allowed to tell him. He deleted it. He got the distinct impression they were at an impasse. 

Tedros: Did you leave early?

The second he’d sent it, he was horrified with himself, but it was too late.

Agatha: Why would you think that

Tedros cringed, horrified, then cringed even more at his reply;

Tedros: Just didn’t see you after 

Agatha: I didn’t think Dovey would take kindly to my presence

It was a barefaced lie, and they both knew it. Dovey liked Agatha, and enjoyed tearing pop culture to pieces with her. But Tedros pretended to believe it, because he’d already embarrassed himself enough. He replied with a few pathetically peppy emojis, and Agatha changed the subject entirely; 

Agatha: When’s your album out?

Tedros: March 12th. Why?

Agatha: Why do you think, genius

Tedros: I figured it was for reviewing but like

Tedros: You don’t have to

Tedros: Lol

Agatha: It’s a massive high-profile release.

Agatha: I do have to

Tedros: Oh… ok

Tedros: I hope you like it

Agatha: I usually do

Tedros tried not to think into that too far, but Agatha was already done with the subject, so he didn’t get the chance;

Agatha: I’m gonna turn in.

Tedros: Oh shit it’s like 2am I didn’t notice… sorry. same

…should he? Should he…

Almost without thinking, he added;

Tedros: Goodnight! xx

He flung his phone away from him, humiliated with himself, and resolved not to look at it again for the rest of the night. 

...except he did. And she’d replied.

Agatha: Goodnight. x

Confused and miserable, Tedros threw his phone on the floor and crawled under the duvet to sulk. 

The only good thing about the chaos of his album release was that he didn’t have time to worry about Agatha’s review (or Agatha in general), because his brain was stuffed full of a billion other things; promotion schedules, new lyrics, new choreography, sales, streaming and chart performance stats, those weird Spotify vertical videos, playlisting, tour planning, promotional photos, not touching his hair or his hairstylist would kill him, not touching his face or his makeup team would kill him, not ripping his outfits or his stylist would kill him, finding the energy to be funny and engaging on talk shows or in promotional performances--

Agatha: 

Agatha: bad_favour_review.pdf

Agatha: Review’s out tomorrow. Thought I’d send it over early.

Tedros’s heart sank to his toes. 

Here it was. He’d been labouring under the intense delusion that he might somehow miss it, or that she might refuse to review it or hand it off to someone else-- but no, the papers loved it when she reviewed the big players, because they thought it was funny for her to take pop titans down a peg.

Especially when it was him. 

God, what had he been thinking? She was going to hate it. She loathed things like this, big grand declarations-- it might have been subtle to everyone else, but to her, it was going to be the equivalent of a big fucking neon sign that declared I’M NOT OVER AGATHA LMAO CAN YOU GUYS TELL to the entire world, because she was the queen of close reading and guessing references. And there was nothing Agatha hated more than that sort of declaration. Plus, it was all produced in that sort of style that she loved to poke holes in, classic synth pop that was-- what had she said? Great when it’s done right, but it’s never done right, so typically it’s just painful. 

Starting to panic, Tedros seriously considered typing out some bland response pretending that he'd read it, and never actually clicking the link. But she’d know if he was bluffing, because… well, of course she would. 

Tedros: Oh thanks--

Agatha: Hah. Are you actually going to read it?

All of Tedros’s vaguely nauseous notions of just sending it to Dovey and going to cry and hug Chicken were squashed under the sudden eruption of his ego. Well, if she wasn’t expecting him to read it, he would read it! He’d show her that he was doing well-- no, not just well, great. That he was doing great. That he wasn’t as pathetic and pining as he’d made himself look. That he was a mature thirty year old man who had accepted her rejection and was bettering himself based on her advice! He would take her criticism, good or bad, and stop being so wimpy about it.

Tedros: Yeah! I’ll read it now

With an immense amount of bravado, Tedros tapped aggressively on the link.

All of his self-aggrandisement died a brutal and gory death at the hands of the headline.

TEDROS PENDRAGON ‘BAD FAVOUR’ REVIEW: HALLELUJAH-- THE GENUINE GENIUS WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. 

Pendragon might be in Bad Favour with his unnamed paramour, but he’s in excellent favour with me. 

Tedros’s jaw dropped-- so far and fast that it audibly clicked . What? But--

Feverishly, his gaze scanned to the main article.

Upon the release of ‘Bad Favour’s’ lead single, ‘Boiling Point!’, I confessed myself surprised. ‘If the whole album is like this’, I wrote in a tweet, ‘he’s onto something big.’ But I was also sceptical; Tedros has never offered up a bad album in the past, not by any means, but he has offered up inconsistent ones. There have been too many tracks, and it becomes sluggish, or there have been random moments of genius that make the rest of what should be a decent album look poor by comparison, or there have been runs of uninspired lyricism or lazy production that do not do justice to his typically charming style. But ‘Bad Favour’ is not like her sisters, and frankly, she does them a disservice-- by eclipsing them immensely. 

So yes, lead single ‘Boiling Point!’ is an unprecedented triumph-- it is radio-friendly enough to ensure an easy saunter to the top of the charts (at the time of writing, it is still sitting pretty as Pendragon’s 5th Billboard No.1 single), but it is also tongue-in-cheek and playful, taunting listeners with the concept that there might be some backstory they’re missing, here, something that explains why exactly he’s ‘swimming, scalding, due for a scolding /  stuck in hot water’ -- but it’s simply too catchy to bear thinking about for most people. (Not for his fans, though; I’ve seen many a lyric dissection on Twitter. How accurate they actually are is another matter, but there is plenty to say nonetheless.) ‘Boiling Point!’ sets the standard for the rest of the album… and the rest of the album rises magnificently to meet it. 

There is both consistency and a distinct uniqueness to each of the tracks on ‘Bad Favour’; most have similar classic pop synths and a cleverly-used orchestral presence that toes the baroque pop line. This merges well with the album’s overall concept, which heavily draws on renaissance and baroque art, and adds a melodramatic sound to what is already a heavily wounded album, as far as lyrics are concerned. There are mildly worrying moments of genuine self-deprecation snuck in amongst the more tongue-in-cheek ones, but they’re held under the surface by tight rhyme schemes and slick word choice (the hallmarks of a newly-enlisted collaborator, rising songwriter Nicola Pipp) and Pendragon’s peppy delivery further accounts for the magicians sleight of hand with which the album flips between gut-punch and gleeful. It could easily turn into a chaotic ricochet of turmoil, but it doesn’t, at least not to the idle listener-- it's a consistent sound with a conflicted narrative, the soundtrack to this current chapter in his life. It’s no secret Pendragon has had a chaotic year-- see his extremely public breakup with Kei Sato-- but whatever he’s trying to address on Bad Favour, it’s more than just petty drama. (Mostly. I think it would be fair to say that tracks like ‘Hard Eye’ and ‘Slam’ probably have their fair share of digs at Sato, and at his new boyfriend, Rhian Sader… who is Tedros’s half brother.) But it’s a layered album; peel back one concept, and three more are glaring back at you. It’s like a crazed, slightly grim, pass-the-parcel. Darker moments, like the misleadingly-named ‘Honeysuckle’ or ‘Intro: Forget About It’ are balanced by obvious future singles, like ‘Slam’ and ‘Where To Now?’, which are going to be hits until the end of civilisation as we know it, because they’re the sort of addictive and ridiculously well-constructed pop bangers that he’s known for, this time let off their leash to run absolutely wild. 

But for all its thumping synths and ridiculous choreo (I wince every time he does that drop into the splits… he will snap his pelvis clean in half one day, and I do not want to be there when it happens), Bad Favour is the same brand of sincerely charming as its creator; it peers hopefully at you, begging you to absolve it, and by the end, you’re happy to. Yes, it has an irritatingly repetitive chorus in ‘Hard Eye’. Yes there were stupid turns of phrase, and moments where I felt something could have been added, or another of Tedros’s favourite clichés came sneaking up in a post-chorus, but these are the smallest of nitpicks. Bad Favour is about confusion and clarity, perfect communication and devastating misunderstanding, chance encounters at clubs and moments of stillness in nature, love, loss, self-love and self-resentment. And whoever Bad Favour is directed at… I don’t think that they can be entirely innocent, either. The subject is a shadowy, constantly shifting figure, and you get the impression the picture is kept deliberately vague; it’s not as damning as previous releases. Even the pronouns remain staunchly ‘you’, not ‘she’ or ‘he’-- Tedros doesn’t seem to think he can afford to be specific, or else he doesn’t want to be. ‘Honeysuckle’ and ‘Outro: Disposition’ seem generous, given previous lyrical clues lean towards a shared mistake, but he seems obsessed with trying to absolve the second party, whoever they are. Sato? An earlier partner, like Beatrix Jolie? The timeline is fuzzy, but one thing is for certain; this album is a big-eyed, earnest labour of love, and someone, somewhere, should be very moved to have received it. Especially as it’s unclear whether they exactly deserve it. Perhaps it's time for them to lower the temperature. Maybe everyone is scalded, and scolded, enough. 

But it doesn’t stop you listening to it over and over again. 

☆☆☆☆☆

Tedros stared at his phone for so long that the screen went to sleep, and reflected back at him his own baffled face. She’d liked it. Agatha had liked it. No, not only had she liked it, she’d given it five stars. That had… that had never happened. He’d never read her other reviews, but he knew she was always scrupulously fair, to the extent that she became miserly and dragged his Metacritic score down. He’d laughed about it in company and sulked about it in private, but the fact remained that she was never this generous. What had changed? He knew it was a good album. If he was to coddle his ego a little, he might say it was his best, that it was excellent, that he was very proud of it. But that was him. Not Agatha. What had swayed her?

--this album is a big-eyed, earnest labour of love, and someone, somewhere, should be very moved to have received it.

...did she know? At the very least, she suspected. He had expected her to work it out, and she couldn’t have missed it. Unless she was being deliberately obtuse, pointedly ignoring it. Perhaps it was the latter. It probably was the latter. But maybe… maybe it had gotten under her skin, the tiniest bit. The references and the inside jokes. No matter how determined she was to be impartial, it must have affected her perception of it. Perhaps it was unfair to have made her review it. Maybe he should have warned her. But the satisfaction, the knowledge that she did appreciate his art-- was it worth it? 

Was it...

Something he’d said on that stupid rooftop garden came back to him. That he’d worried if she didn’t like his work, she couldn’t possibly like him. And now, she liked his work… 

But he also knew, after this year, that she didn’t like him. Not like that. Not how he wanted her to. Before, he’d worried about both, but now, he had confirmation for both… and it wasn’t what he’d wanted.

What use was a great album if it was feeding off such potent, aching disappointment? He’d have been better off not knowing. Better to idly, superficially speculate than to nurse the wound of confirmation. 

And it was all his stupid fault. If he’d just checked who he was calling-- 

Tedros hunched over his phone and sobbed; both in relief, and in horrible, stabbing remorse. 

Foolishly, he decided to go for a walk. 

He so rarely went out without security, but tear-blinded and disorientated, he stumbled outside anyway, and forged down a random London road, clutching his phone in white knuckles. He wasn’t really sure where he was going-- there was a vague idea in his brain about the park he usually took Chicken to-- but either way, he didn’t get far enough to go anywhere much, because the paparazzi who usually lurked around this part of the city caught up with him. At first, it was just one bloke with a camera, and Tedros kept his head down and his hood up, hoping to look inconspicuous enough not to be noticed-- but no such luck. Suddenly, there were two more, and someone else came barrelling out of a café,and someone else rocked up on a fucking motorbike--

And then it was way, way too late, because someone shouted his name, and he was being followed down the road. Panicking, Tedros tried to keep his face impassive, struggling to calculate the fastest route home. Was he stupid? Did he have a death wish? He couldn’t just go sauntering off down the road, especially not two weeks after a new release, when he was on TV almost every night-- 

But he had, and now he was cornered. 

“Shit.” he mumbled to himself, seeing cameramen on either end of the road, quickly advancing. “Shit.”

Camera flashes were already going off, and now Tedros didn’t even try to hide his panic as people crowded him, all shouting questions that jumbled into a chaotic mass of yelling. Heart pounding, he ducked under someone’s arm and tried to make for a gap in the crowd, but that was quickly filled in, and he backed up, trying to avoid the cameras and smacking his ankle, hard, on the curb as he did so. He’d thought it was quiet, but he should have known better-- paps always hung around this bit of London, because it was where all the famous rich people like him lived. 

They were just people doing their jobs, but he’d be damned if it wasn’t one he particularly hated…

“Excuse me--” Tedros shoved past a couple of men, not very gently, and made a beeline for a side road, hoping to make a couple of turns to shake most of them off. But they kept coming, and they kept following him, and Tedros was genuinely starting to think they were going to follow him home, blocking off the road as they were--

Then a car horn honked. Loudly. Most people turned, and the crowd parted slightly, to reveal...

The shittiest, oldest, ugliest black Prius to ever exist in the entire earth’s history came trundling down the road like a tank, sending paps scattering and bouncing off the sides, diving on top of each other to avoid the unforgiving advance of… of...

The unforgiving advance of Agatha’s indestructible siege engine of a car. Tedros knew it was Agatha’s, because he knew the number plate, and he could not remember her owning another one. He was slightly suspicious she’d had several of the exact same. Every car she’d ever owned looked like it had survived the siege of Troy, and slain many great warriors in the process.  

It stopped, with a slightly crunchy pull on the hand brake. The paps reformed--

The passenger side door slammed open with unnecessary force and knocked several people over. Someone dropped their camera, which smashed into pieces on the pavement. 

Tedros gawked through the open door at Agatha. 

“How did you fi--”

“Snap Maps. Get in.” 

Tedros got in-- practically hurled himself in, really, and wrenched the passenger door shut. Agatha laid on the horn with some gusto, and when the crowd of cameras did not part, simply revved the engine and started driving. 

“Um, Agatha--” Tedros ducked behind the sun shield as a flash went off. “You’re gonna run someone over.”

“If I was gonna run someone over, I would have floored it.” said Agatha thinly. “If they don’t have the good sense to get away from the slowly moving car, that’s on them.”

“...but--”

“Oh, good, they made a gap.” Agatha slammed on the accelerator, and Tedros scrabbled to put his seatbelt on as the car shot forwards. He would prefer not to go through the windshield-- that was, if it even broke. More likely it would break him. This car did not like to do what it was supposed to do, which was why Agatha owned it. 

They careened out onto a side road, and Agatha made a sharp left turn. Tedros twisted to look over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of paps sprinting desperately after them--

Then they fully rounded the corner, and were away. Tedros laughed incredulously, slightly stunned that he’d really been rescued by Agatha’s shitty bulldozer of a car--

Agatha’s car. 

Suddenly mortified, Tedros sank down in his seat.

“How did you know…”

“Since you’re predisposed to lose your mind over any kind of opinion I express on you, good or bad, I thought I would text you to check on you, but you didn’t reply for a solid 45 minutes, so I decided to come and confront you in person, but you weren’t at home, so I was lightly concerned you might have been kidnapped.”

“Lightly?”

“Yeah.” Agatha glanced in the rearview to make sure they hadn’t been followed, then started a beeline for the Starbucks drive through.

“...why are we going to Starbucks?”

“Need somewhere to hide til Dovey comes to find you. Paps will assume we’re either going back to your place, or mine, and they will be wrong. Also, I want tea.”

“Also, you want tea.” repeated Tedros in resignation. “Buy me something.”

Agatha kissed her teeth, pretending to be annoyed. 

“You’re like… a millionaire. But fine.”

Tedros pretended to be putting his hood up, but really he side-eyed her as they pulled into the queue. 

“Their tea menu is such bullshit.” said Agatha, squinting at the board. “Why is it all branded? What the hell is Emperor's Clouds & Mist Tea? Jesus.”

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with Jesus.”

“Don’t be a pedant.” she leaned over to order, and Tedros watched her. Maybe he was blinded by the review, but her manner was nowhere near as brusque as it had been the last few times he’d seen her. 

Perhaps it's time for them to lower the temperature.

She ordered him a hot chocolate, and they parked in the nearby car park to share a panini and various cakes, because Agatha rarely managed to go into any kind of café or drinks establishment without also buying half a meal whilst she was in there. Tedros fielded a couple of aggressive calls from Chaddick and Dovey, whilst Agatha flipped merrily through the radio channels, slagging them off one by one.

“No, it’s the other Starbucks-- I said I was just being stupid-- yeah, but I’m not dead…”

“Only because I saved you.” said Agatha. “Ugh, I hate Capital--”

“I wasn’t in imminent danger of death, just-- oy, switch back, that was my song-- no, I meant Agatha, Clarissa...”

“I’ve already heard Boiling Point! more times than I care to count.” sniffed Agatha. “Gonna be impossible to remove it from my Spotify Wrapped in time, this year. Very embarrassing.”

“Sorry, do you even critique your Spotify Wrapped?” demanded Tedros, finally managing to end his conversation with Dovey and slamming his phone down. 

“Yeah.” said Agatha, like it was obvious. 

“God, you’re a terror.”

Agatha ignored him. Tedros stretched his legs out, starting to get cramp-- and his foot hit something plastic. Frowning, he stooped down, and pulled out a CD from under the glove compartment.

“I see you take good care of my albums.” he sighed, extracting Bad Favour and buffing a scratch off the case. “It’s only been out two weeks, Agatha!”

Agatha didn’t reply. Tedros looked down at the case, and frowned. He pried it open. 

“Where’s the disc?”

“In the CD player, genius.”

“...oh.” Tedros stared at the cover for a minute, in silence. Agatha drummed her hand on the steering wheel, then frowned and wrote something in the notes app of her phone. She went back to her tea. She did not look at him. 

Tedros finally voiced the thought. 

“...you didn’t send me a different version of the review to the one you published, did you?”

Slowly, Agatha’s gaze swivelled, and she just looked at him, with damning incredulity, over the top of her paper cup. 

“...right.” said Tedros, sensing the are you stupid?? without it needing to be said. “I-- yeah.”

He sensed Agatha was biting back a cutting comment. He looked back at the album. 

--one thing is for certain; this album is a big-eyed, earnest labour of love, and someone, somewhere, should be very moved to have received it. Especially as it’s unclear whether they exactly deserve it.

“Um.” he said. “So...”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He stared at his knees, and at the album case. 

Agatha settled back in the driver's seat and started picking at the remaining brownie. 

“...so?”

“So, um…” Tedros swallowed hard. “In your review, you said that you didn’t know… didn’t know who… um--”

Tedros paused, took a too-large swig of his drink--

“Who it was about? I lied, I know it’s about me.”

Tedros choked and sprayed hot chocolate all over the dashboard. Agatha sighed deeply.

“Good thing this car has seen much worse.” she threw a couple of napkins in his lap as he spluttered. “God, Tedros, I thought you would have connected the dots.”

Still coughing, Tedros peered at her through streaming eyes, bewildered. This didn’t make sense. He had thought she probably knew, but he had been ready to straight up tell her, or at least wrestle it out of her-- not to be smacked in the face by her immediate admission. There was no way she’d be so casual about this. If he’d thought she was going to be so chill about it, he’d have pitched the entire thing to her, but her manner in the hotel had been so different--

There had to be something he was missing. 

He sat up and started wiping down the dashboard, fairly sure he could feel Agatha’s gaze boring into the back of his neck. He stuffed the wet napkins into the bag their food had come in, then took a deep breath. 

“Can I just… talk through it? All of it?”

Agatha raised her eyebrows. 

“Ok.”

Tedros ran his nail down the ridged edge of the jewel case, then remembered Agatha hated that noise and stopped. 

“Um, I wasn’t drunk. When I called you, I mean. I was very drunk at that party, but-- uh, yeah. Not drunk, just… feeling pathetic and didn’t look very hard at which contact I’d pressed. But I don’t think I made much sense anyway.”

“Not a whole lot. Enough.”

“Yeah, so. Um. Didn’t take that one very well. Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it weird, and I definitely didn’t do it on purpose, in some kind of like… scary... guilt trip? I really did think I’d called Beatrix.”

“I gathered.”

“Yeah, well, you heard what I said. I said I knew you didn’t like me like that anymore, and I was fully aware you turned me down-- which is, um, fine--- and how you were nice enough to try and make it sound like it was because you were concerned about the fan reception, when really I knew it was just because you weren’t interested--”

“What?”

But Tedros had picked up steam and continued on, trying to get it all out at once;

“Sorry I hung up on you, and I’m sorry for those hysterical texts, I was so mortified-- like I said in them, you were right; I didn’t wanna ruin our friendship or anything, so I told you to forget it because I didn’t want you to think weirdly of me--”

“Wait, wait--”

“And then I know you were really mad at me at the party, ‘coz I made myself look stupid and you had to come and save me, I feel so bad-- I didn’t even mean to tell you, I really tried to be quiet about it, because I like, I respect your decision... and I should have asked you if it was alright to write about it, I knew you were going to work it out I was just too sc-- are you ok?”

For Agatha had leaned forward and put her head in her hands. 

“Agatha--?”

“That’s what you said?” she croaked. “And I was right about the ruining our friendship thing?”

“Huh?”

“I dropped my phone.” managed Agatha, not looking at him. “I missed the last half of your stupid monologue, and so I didn’t hear the nice enough to make it sound like it was the fan reception bit. And your text… oh, fucking hell--”

“What? Yeah? You said I’m not risking ruining our friendship to be your rebound girlfriend and I thought you kinda had a point, even though it made me wanna walk into the ocean and never come back, so I said so--” 

“I think, er--” Agatha lifted her head, looking immensely pained. “I think I might have been… stupid?”

Tedros stared uncomprehendingly at her. 

“What? What did you think I meant?”

“I--” Agatha cast around for an escape, even though it was her own car. Tedros half expected to be shoved out of the door at any minute, and wondered if he ought to put his seatbelt back on. “I turned you down because I thought you weren’t serious--”

Tedros’s thought process was not working well, stuck a few sentences back.

“But then I made it obvious I was serious and you still agreed to forget about i--” he inhaled so fast his chest hurt. “ Oh fuck, when I said you were right, you thought I was agreeing that you were-- 

“Too mean? Yeah.” Agatha popped the lid off her cup again and started smushing the tea-bag against the side of the cup, apparently determined not to look at him. “I didn’t hear the last bit about how you thought I was using it as an excuse. I thought you agreed. I thought you were… I don’t know, horrified by your seemingly inexplicable attraction to me and wanted to head me off before I got the wrong idea, I thought you agreed I’d be bad for your image and you wanted to date someone like Valentina--”

“Who on God’s green earth is Valentina?” interrupted Tedros. “Who is she? Why do you keep bringing her up?”

“The model-- you spoke to her--”

“That lady from fashion week?” Tedros had a vague memory-- 

“The-- the tabloids said--”

“The tabloids?” said Tedros incredulously. “Agatha! Why would you believe--”

“Sometimes they’re right--” 

“Were you jealous of someone I spoke to once?”

“No! Well, maybe a-- a bit…”

“Tedros gawked at her, incredulously trying to sort through everything she’d just told him.

“How did you manage to misconstrue it that badly? Why did you think I’d think that?”

“Well, Tedros,” said Agatha thinly, rapidly retreating into her hidey-hole of biting remarks. “You’re you, and I’m me, so it’s not really that hard to think why I might have assumed you were worried about your imag--”

“YOU’RE A MUSIC CRITIC!” shouted Tedros. “HOW COULD YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME? ALL YOU DO IS ANALYSIS! HAVE WE SWAPPED BRAINS?”

“YOU THOUGHT I DIDN’T LIKE YOU!”

“BECAUSE YOU TURNED ME DOW-- ok, ok, alright. Let’s just--” Tedros took a deep breath. “You turned me down because you thought I wasn’t serious and I was just trying to get validation after Kei stomped all over my ego, but I was serious and was crushed. Then I called you by accident, but you didn’t hear the crucial bit and hence you misunderstood my texts, also you got really insecure and jealous of some model called Valentina, who I barely remember talking to. So you agreed to forget about it when I begged you to-- because we both thought the other one wasn’t interested-- and then you manifested your disappointment as irritation when confronted with me being pathetic and throwing up on Rhian. Then I dumped a load of stuff on you, even though we were supposedly forgetting about it, and just made it really, really awkward, because we were weird and repressed and couldn’t talk about it. And then, because I’m me, I got all fatalistic and wrote about it, and then realised you had to review it and panicked, because I hadn’t been subtle enough, but it was too late. Then I absolutely lost my shit over the review because I was so relieved you didn’t hate it, and also horrified that after all that you still didn’t like me, and I went for an ill-advised walk and got cornered by the paps, you tracked me down on Snap Maps like some kind of private investigator... and now we’re here.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

Agatha turned serenely around and started trying to get out of the car.

“No!” Tedros grabbed the hood of her coat and tried to yank her back. “You can’t run off! We’re at a service station and this is your car!” 

Agatha tried to smack his hands away and elbowed the horn, which honked very loudly and made them both jump. Agatha recovered faster, and immediately shoved him off the armrest of his seat, where he’d been trying to climb across. Tedros, who had always had weirdly skinny hips, fell down the middle and got wedged in-between the armrests of the two front seats, and was not fast enough to free himself-- Agatha firmly planted her hands on either armrest and wedged her knee on his hip to keep him there. 

“...right. Hm.” Tedros tipped his head back to look her in the eye. “Are you into this kind of thing?”

“No.” 

“Great. Me neither. See, this is proper communication, you should try it--”

“I should try it?” spluttered Agatha indignantly. “Have you reread those texts you sent me?”

“Um. No, actually…” Agatha scrabbled in her pocket for her phone and Tedros sighed. “Look, are we gonna make out, or--? Oh, wow, they… yeah. Yeah, they were pretty bad.”

He slowly scanned the collection of hysterical, typo-ridden texts that had been shoved in his face.

“Ok, I... uh, kinda see why you might have been able to misunderstand them… what does that say?”

“What?”

“That.”

“I think it’s meant to say anything.”

“Ah-- oww--” Tedros slipped further down the middle of the seats and got stabbed in the arse by his own CD. “Oh my god, I wrote an entire album based on you being an idiot and me being pathetic?”

“I will not tolerate being called an idiot by someone who vomited on Rhian. It was a team effort.”

Tedros squinted up at her, silhouetted against the windshield.

“Mm. Fair. Team effort. Maybe I can make something out of that.” he paused. “Hang on, I don’t get it-- how did you manage to write that entire review, and listen to the entire album, and somehow still come to the conclusion that I didn’t like you?”

“Self-deprecation is a powerful force, dear heart.” said Agatha wryly. Tedros squinted, trying to parse her expression. He got the impression he was being lied to. 

“Maybe, but you like to beat all your feelings to death with logic and cynicism, so tell me your thought proce--”

“Oh, Tedros, a toddler could have listened to that and realised you were pining like a lost puppy.” snapped Agatha, suddenly dropping her head so their faces were inches apart. “I realised by track four that you had liked me all along and that I’d fucked up. I was going to admit I’d messed up, and got halfway there before I chickened out and decided to try and pretend I’d come to find you about the review, which was a lie. Alright? And now we’re fighting in a car park.” 

Tedros stared balefully at her from between the two seats. Agatha paused.

“...sorry, that was mean.”

“It was, a bit.”

“Sorry.” said Agatha, again.  

Tedros peered at her. “Did you cry?”

“What?”

“Over the album.” said Tedros, already prepared to poke holes in whatever lie she spun him--

“Yeah.”

Tedros blinked. “Huh?”

“A lot.”

“Oh. Huh. Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Agatha sighed.

“You’re right, I’m not.” 

“I really, really wish you were just slightly more annoying.”

“You’d still like me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

Tedros, who had managed to unwedge one of his arms during their bickering, snuck his hand up the plane of her back.

“Am I gonna be your top Spotify Wrapped artist?” he asked softly.

“If you are, I will delete my entire account.” Agatha whispered. Then, at normal volume; “You’re so fucking embarassing.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“I’m not known for it.”

“Mm.” said Tedros vaguely. “Oh, well. Listen, if you’re gonna keep me stuck here, we have to make out, it’s just like, the law--”

“Oh, get up, you rake--”

Tedros pouted as Agatha hauled him upright. 

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a your left hand was going purple because the circulation was cutting off so I decided to retrieve you.” said Agatha, clambering back into the driver’s seat. Tedros plopped back down in the passenger seat, peering at his left hand.

“Oh. So it was--”

Then Agatha planted her hands on either side of his head, leaned over, and kissed him. 

“Was it really a self-esteem thing?” said Tedros, later.

“Who cares?” muttered Agatha against his lips. Tedros pulled back to frown at her. 

“Um, me? Because apparently you managed to convince yourself that the tabloids were more believable than your own brain?”

Agatha’s jaw jutted obstinately. 

“Your perspective on this is very odd, given I had to save you from the paparazzi earlier. You’re ridiculously famous. Hold something in a picture and it gets sold out famous.”

“That doesn’t normally stop you from associating with me.”

Agatha sighed deeply. 

“I am going to get slaughtered on Twitter.”

“Are you kidding? You love fighting people on Twitter!”

“Not all thirty million people who follow you!”

“It’s fifty.”

Agatha bopped him on the head with the Starbucks bag. Tedros tried to kiss her again--

Someone banged on the window, and they jumped so hard that Tedros accidentally turned the hazard lights on--

Dovey was glaring at him through the passenger window. 

“Oh thank fucking god, I could have died right then and there.” Tedros moaned. “I thought it was the paps--”

“Get out of the car!” Dovey said loudly through the glass.

“What if I don’t want to?” demanded Tedros.

“I could run her over.” offered Agatha, putting the keys back in the ignition.

“You cannot run over my elderly manager!”

“I could lightly run her over?”

“We’re not done with this.” Tedros told her firmly, opening the door and getting a leg out. “We’re gonna like… talk this out.” 

“Sure, sure, 100%.” Agatha leaned on the steering wheel and grinned lazily at him. “All about communication now, we are.”

Tedros pointed at her. 

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” said Agatha cheerfully. “Have fun getting the bollocking of your life from Clarissa--”

“I have already texted your mother, Achara.” said Dovey, from behind Tedros.

Agatha’s face dropped, and she bolted up. 

“What? No-- Clarissa, I thought we were cool! You snitched on me to my mother? I’m thirty years old! I can do what I want!”

“She was trying to call you and you weren’t answering.” said Dovey sternly. “And if you thought I was going to mind my own business, you have vastly underestimated the nosiness of old women, dear.” 

“But-- shit, I put my phone on silent--” Agatha scrabbled in her pocket, and Tedros beamed through the open door. 

“And you have fun getting the bollocking of your life from Callis. Tell her I said hi, yeah? Love you, bye--”

“I HATE YOU--”

Tedros slammed the door and went skipping off to Chaddick’s car, in a very respectable impression of a frog that finally, finally, worked out how to get out of the goddamn pot.

Ted Talk

Achara: been a good run guys, but I can no longer be in Ted Talk in good conscience 

Nicholas: D: 

Yara: ??????

Sophie: You have a conscience?

Beatrix: What????? Why????

Achara: bc I’m not an ex anymore

Achara: later losers!

Achara has left the chat